Hey, remember when we rounded up the top comment-getting GardenRant posts of 2006? The list may or may not have revealed anything about the nature of our little community but it was FUN, so let’s do it again. They’re in reverse order, starting with the 10th Hottest:

Web 2.0 in the Garden is a brainstorming session about gardening and the Internet. It asked if we wanted "one massive, socially networked mash-up" and you all had answers.

Sloggers and Clogs – You May Have Already Won! was our announcement that free gardening shoes
were being mailed to our top 6 commenters for a recent period, and that started a round of ballot-stuffing. But that’s okay because it was funny.

Do you Plant and Tell? is a come-on to send us your record-keeping stories, the best of which would win – you guessed it – more swag. So you guys like freebies – nothing wrong with that.

Why are the catalogs better reading than the magazines? sparked a group rant&rave session about magazines and catalogs. Check it out for catalogs you’re not already receiving that could help get you through these long winter nights. Notice the magazine that started the rant is Garden Gate ("namby-pamby, depressing, insulting"), which earned another rant just recently for not giving photo credits to Buffalo gardeners.

A Post about Pay-Per-Post questioned the practice of bloggers taking payment for writing articles and turned into a free-for-all over taking money for any and everything. Duck!

Initiation Rites is about rules for beginning gardeners, though you can tell from the permalink URL that it was originally entitled "Rules for Fools". So these rules and more great ones in the comments aren’t just for beginners.

The Fedco Seeds of the Apocalypse turned into an argument in which everyone tried to convince one global-warming denier of the error of his arguments, to no avail. He’s since stopped visiting us, so those arguments can be put on the shelf along with our unused Miracle-Gro.

AND OUR HOTTEST RANT OF THE YEAR, WITH 44 COMMENTS

Bloggers of Blogger.com, Rise Up! was partly a discussion of fixes to Blogger.com’s new rules for commenting and partly a rallying cry to pressure them to change ‘em back. The cause was a worthy one – saving the kind of discussion we’ve come to enjoy between Blogger.com writers and their readers – and it had a happy ending when the obstructions to commenting were removed after bloggers across all subject matters voiced their displeasure. (Oh great and powerful Internet companies, you expect bloggers – of all people – to simply adapt without complaint?)

SO WHAT DOES ALL THAT TELL US?

Comments naturally follow when the topic is US – what websites we want, our communication needs, giveaways, and how and whether we’re paid for blogging – and those subjects are only hot to US.

Global warming was a hot topic in 2007, open to argument as to whether it even exists, but those days are surely over.

It’ll always be fun to read accounts of gardening by nongardening journalists. Fun in a really frustrating, rant-inducing way, that is.

Garden Gate Mag is bad in a good way – good fodder for ranting.

FINALLY We thank all our readers for stopping by, but the ones who leave comments have a special place in our
hearts because they keep us on our toes and make this the fun, rowdy place that it is. Y’all keep coming back!

And during 2007 there were two behind-the-scenes milestones for GardenRant that are worth remembering at year-end. In January Elizabeth joined us, and now it’s hard to imagine the Rant without her. Then in July we all met – in person, no more virtual anything, the real deal. We partied! We schemed! We got drunk! And the whole enterprise just got more fun.

I just went back and re-read the mag vs. catalogue rant (which I love and whole-heartedly agree with) . . . The fact is, I think, catalogues have two advantages: 1) new “issues” come less often (absence makes the heart grow fonder), and 2) they cover ALL the new stuff in their speciality.

Garden mags, on the other hand, generally have a pretty limited repertoire, so after a while they feel old and rehashed. Blogs get cool personal stories and live news. People Magazine gets Brittany Spears. But principles of garden design? Soil building? Pruning? These and the other common topics are a) already covered really well in all the gardening books I own, and b) not that amenable to variety.

There are a very small number of key themes most garden mags work with, and no matter how much variation a clever writer introduces, after a while, most of the stories in most of the issues end up feeling terribly familiar. They can highlight one or two nifty new introductions, describe bad-ass blogs on the web, include one or two really good essays, but that’s about it. After you’ve read a couple of years of most of the U.S. mags, you’re ready for a break.